


Cruel Youth

by MeltinSkelton



Series: Georgetown ‘Verse [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Age Difference, Age Regression/De-Aging, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Both in a side character, Case Fic, Cuddling & Snuggling, Curses, De-Aged Sam Winchester, Dirty Talk, Established Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Insecurity, Kissing, M/M, Magic, Minor Character Death, Mystery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Romance, Rough Oral Sex, Size Kink, Suicidal Thoughts, Teen Sam Winchester, The boys are actually surprisingly healthy in this one, Underage Drinking, Underage Kissing, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:21:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29488212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeltinSkelton/pseuds/MeltinSkelton
Summary: People are vanishing in the factory town of Meadville, PA, and the Winchester brothers set out to find what’s happening. Unfortunately for Sam and Dean, the case takes a hard left turn when Sam falls victim to a curse that may or may not be related to the disappearances. Dean finds himself caught between trying to solve Sam’s problem and trying to solve the case that brought them here to begin with. Sam, meanwhile, finds himself caught between his love for his older brother, and Dean’s own long-standing complexes.OR,Sam gets kiddified during a case and Dean can’t fucking deal.NOTE: The “underage” tags are added to avoid any triggering experiences, but please be aware that there is NO actual underage sex occurring anywhere in this work!! There are mentions of previous teenage fooling-around in some later chapters and one or two underage kisses, but that is the extent of any actual content.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Series: Georgetown ‘Verse [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2041678
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	Cruel Youth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garth contacts the Winchester brothers about a rash of strange, sudden disappearances in Pennsylvania.
> 
> The Winchester brothers, unfortunately, are kind of in the middle of something.

Worst part about tequila, Neil thought, was the smell.

Not at first, mind you. Tequila smelled nice and sweet right out of the bottle. Especially the cheap stuff. It even tasted sugar-sweet, almost honey-like, and the _really_ cheap stuff even started to coat your tongue and your throat. You could chase it away with salt and lime if you wanted, if the weight of the agave wasn’t your thing, but Neil liked it. Liked it all - the thickness, the sweetness, and the low-settled burn that crept out of his belly and all the way down to his fingers and toes.

It was the way tequila smelled when it made the trip back _up_ which was the problem. Which was funny, really, because it was honestly the _exact same smell_.

Up or down, in or out, either way, the syrupy reek of tequila filled the alley, and Neil Dodson was just trying to find room to breathe between heaves. Within the watery circle of his vision, a gutful of Don Julio was turning the snow between his boots into body-temperature slush. What a waste. But Neil thought of himself as a bottle-half-full kinda guy, and a half-full bottle still sat in his pocket, waiting to be drunk. Optimism was key, you understand.

With a grunt and a sigh, Neil pushed himself away from the wall of Jack’s Pharmacy. He wasn’t entirely sure how long he’d been there. Long enough, at least, to have what felt like a perfect imprint of the bricks on his generous forehead. He rubbed the marks away with clumsy fingers and staggered back down the alleyway towards the road. The whole world danced and swayed. Everything sparkled like the inside of a Christmas bauble, big fat heavy flakes of snow shimmering glitter-pretty in the streetlights. The holidays had been over in earnest for nearly a month, now, but Neil didn’t care. He was on his own schedule, and tonight, he was celebrating.

Neil Dodson no longer had a home. This might have seemed like an odd thing to celebrate - and it was, Neil guessed, if you didn’t know the long and short of it. But Neil’s _home_ had been little more than a rat-filled, high-rent, sagging flophouse to begin with, and he’d recently decided that he was just tired of it. Tired of the rats, yeah, and tired of the rent. Tired of the leaking roof and the hit-or-miss plumbing and the people always coming and going and fighting and screaming and fucking in the other rooms at all hours. Neil was also tired of Gina. Tired of the dramatic way she blamed him for all of her problems - as if a failed two-year relationship and a kid was something he’d _wanted_ rather than an accident he’d _fallen into_. He was tired of her demanding what money was left after Neil’s rent was paid, tired of Gina’s friends coming by with threats and promises when Neil didn’t feel like handing over Gina’s money. Tired of Gina’s phone calls, tired of the lawyer’s phone calls, the social worker’s house calls, tired of having a place to get any sort of calls at all.

The home wasn’t worth the trouble. Wasn’t hardly worth much to begin with. And so Neil had simply…stopped. Stopped paying, stopped listening, stopped answering the door, the phone, the letters. And finally, he was free. But with that freedom came certain caveats, and there was no ignoring the two men Neil’s landlord had hired to make sure the room was empty and available for a more cooperative tenant.

Fine. Very well. _C’est la vie_ and _que serà, serà_. The last string had been soundly snipped, and now Neil was _completely_ free - and celebrating, sure. Why not? Again, _optimism_. Nothing to worry about but the vomit on his shoes, the snow gently building up in little drifts on his shoulders and in the oil-black snarls of his hair, and the holiday-card memory of the winter woods just outside of the Meadville city limits.

That image was the most important thing. _That_ was the real party favor, the blue ribbon, the prize at the end of this impromptu pilgrimage that kept dragging Neil further and further beyond the town proper. The buildings on either side gave way to shrubs and trees. The sidewalks dead-ended into dirt and gravel shoulders, then into dormant, snow-buried grass. All the while, Neil trudged resolutely forward with a drunken smile on his lips, and a song in his throat.

“ _I would go out tonight,_ ” Neil’s voice warbled through the woods that had begun crowding in beside the road. He plucked at a thread on the overworn coat barely protecting him from the weather. “ _But I haven’t got a stitch to wear._ ”

A semi truck passed by and swerved to avoid Neil. It wasn’t sharp enough to run the truck off the road - the snowfall was heavy and the road narrow, so the driver was already going thankfully, cautiously slow. But it _was_ enough to piss the guy off. The blare of the horn and the driver’s angry shouting sent Neil’s head ringing; he wheeled around and gave the bastard the finger, hollering an unintelligible mix of Morrissey lyrics and obscenities at the truck’s taillights. In Neil’s defense, he hadn’t _known_ he’d wobbled damn near into the middle of the lane. He hadn’t _meant_ to do that. The world was just becoming less and less linear the longer he walked and the longer he sipped. It was an honest mistake, and Neil felt like the guy should’ve cut him some slack.

“ _This man said ‘it’s gruesome that someone so handsome should care._ ’”

Sickly-sweet tequila smell back in his nose again. The bottle clinked, unpretty and jarring, against his teeth. Neil half-hummed the chorus against the liquor that ran down his chin. 

“ _... **ah** \- who never knew his place. He said, ‘return the ring.’ _”

The world spun deliriously but Neil had lived here all his life, all his _goddamn,_ miserable life, and he knew exactly where he was going. 

“ _He knows so much about these things…_ ”

Out past the highway, out by French Creek, there would be no one for miles, nothing but the trees and hills and ravines he’d played in as a kid. Neil cut for the woods with all the instinctive trust of a southbound bird, following the magnet-pull of those childhood memories. Between notes, between gulps, between spinning black patches where he could scarcely remember walking at all, he somehow found himself on the bridge he’d been aiming for.

Underneath him, black water churned and frothed and spat frozen sprays at his feet. He’d have shivered, if he’d had the sense to be bothered by the cold. But the liquor in his veins lied to him, kept him warm. He stood soaking in a that perfect last-vision snapshot of snow and stars and river. What a lovely thing to see before the grand finale. Then, with all the caution he could muster in his current state, Neil climbed up onto the old wooden railing. Carefully, _carefully_. Be a shame to eat shit now - crack his head open and ruin the poetry of the thing.

It goes without saying that, given his current state, he didn’t notice the gentle footsteps nearby, nor the small shadow cutting through the light beside him. 

He had only just sucked in his supposed last breath when everything went suddenly, unexpectedly dark.

* * *

* * *

  
**THREE WEEKS LATER**

Sam had his hands full when his phone rang, so Dean politely answered the call for him.

“Yeah?” Dean frowned - then smiled. “Heya, Garth. No, it’s Dean. Oh. Sam’s, uh, busy. He says hi, though.”

Sam hadn’t actually said anything yet, due to that fact that his mouth was _also_ full.

“Yeah. No, we’re good. Fort Wayne. Nah, just a haunting. Yeah. You?”

It bears mentioning that Sam’s hands and his mouth were both full of the same thing. It _also_ bears mentioning - for a variety of reasons - that the thing they were full of was Dean’s fucking dick. 

Garth had always had impeccable timing.

Dean tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder. He leaned back on his palms, reclining further on the edge of the bed where he sat, and spread his legs wider. Sam followed him, leaning forward, his hands gripping at the denim on Dean’s thighs and his lips still wrapped around the head of Dean’s cock. Muffled as it was, Sam could hear the sound of Garth’s voice filtering down from the phone - as well as another voice.

“Oh!” Dean piped up happily. “Hi, Bess. How you doin’, honey?”

Sam sat back on his heels, sighing as Dean slipped free from his mouth. He swiped at his chin with the back of his hand.

“What is this, a friggin’ conference call?” he scoffed incredulously. “Tell ‘em to _call us back_ , man.”

“ _Hey_.” Dean shot Sam a look. He reached up to cover the speaker demurely with one hand. “I got this, alright? Mind your business.”

“‘My business?’” Sam snapped. “It’s _my_ damn phone!”

“Oh, for the—“ Dean trailed off and grumbled something under his breath. He then proceeded to use his speaker-covering hand to reach and snag a handful of Sam’s hair, hauling him forward again. “Get back to work, would ya?”

Sam - who had opened his mouth to protest further and had gotten a faceful of dick instead - grunted and coughed and tried his hardest to look pissed-off. It was an exercise in futility. His own cock was still hard as ever; it jumped and drooled a thick string of precome onto the floor in direct response to the rough treatment. Dean (who, at this point, knew _exactly_ what flipped Sam’s switches) watched his little brother pout and ache with a crooked, satisfied grin for a few seconds before returning his attention to Garth.

“What? No, uh - Sammy just, he had a quick question.” Dean loosened the grip he had on Sam’s hair. He turned it into a caress, stroking down the side of Sam’s face. Sam rewarded him with a long, slow, deliberate slurp that had Dean’s eyes fluttering shut. “Yeah. Yep. Real imp— _ah_ …important stuff. You know how he is. Always got his nose buried in _something_.”

Sam frowned (as best he could) and gave Dean’s balls a tight, reprimanding squeeze.

“Ah! _Fuck—“_

The cock in Sam’s mouth throbbed and nudged at the back of his throat. He gagged lightly, swallowed reflexively. Dean, being the (unfortunately) expressive guy that he was, failed to bite back a groan. Even from where he was, Sam could hear the concern in the soft-spoken question from the other end of the line.

“No, no no no, I’m fine, I just, uh. My toe. I stubbed my toe, and—“ Dean sucked in a calming breath. “ _Shit._ Garth, man, wh-what did you _need_ , exactly?”

Sam huffed out a laugh through his nose, his breath tickling through the coarse hair at the base of Dean’s cock. He reached up to wrap his wide, warm hands around Dean’s waist. His fingertips sunk lovingly into the tiny amount of plush at Dean’s beltline - a pleasant result of the recent slowdown in work and Dean’s tendency to, as he put it, “nest.”

“Right. Okay. How m-many? Three. Fuck.” Dean’s hand slipped through Sam’s hair again, his fingertips pressing at the back of Sam’s neck, trembling. “No, I-I’m writing it down.”

Sam swirled his tongue and pressed further forward, took more of Dean down his throat, his brow furrowing as he fought back another, stronger gag.

“In a month?” Dean managed through clenched teeth. “Alright. And y-y-y— _oh, God_.“

Sam looked up curiously to find Dean watching him, his eyes hooded and his mouth hanging open and the phone dangerously close to slipping off his shoulder. Garth’s voice was still rambling on from the other end of the line but Sam got the distinct impression Dean wasn’t retaining much of the info. So he drew back a bit, back ‘til just the very tip of Dean’s cock brushed against his lips, and quirked an eyebrow expectantly.

Dean, after a moment of just scowling back at him, huffed. He closed his eyes, licked his lips, and cleared his throat.

“Sorry, Garth,” he said, forcibly steady. “Repeat that last part for me? I got, uh. I didn’t hear you.”

Sam waited until it sounded like Garth had repeated the necessary information, and then swallowed Dean back down without warning.

“God _damn_!” Dean barked. Then, with a weak, thready laugh, “No, I’m just—I’m e-excited. For the case. I mean, _wow_ . That’s…this is…hoo, _boy_.”

Satisfying as it was to watch Dean floundering, Sam was too distracted to really enjoy the comedy of it all. He shut his eyes and threw himself into tasting his brother, lapping and sucking at him, spit slipping from the corners of his mouth to pool messily in the cloth of Dean’s boxers. Dean’s cock swelled against Sam’s tongue, leaking a steady drip of precome down Sam’s throat. Sam’s own cock was painfully hard between his legs; his own breath came faster, stolen in between bobs of his head, broken up in little grunts and moans. His nails cut crescents into the skin of Dean’s hips as he tried to stop his brother from thrusting up too deep. He caught only snippets of the half-obscured conversation going on over his head:

“O-okay,” gasped Dean. “Penn…Pennsylvania. Got it.”

Sam spared a hand to stroke him, to cover what slick length he couldn’t keep in his mouth. Dean squirmed and shook in Sam’s hold, the curve of his side hot and damp under Sam’s palm, the muscles in his stomach flexing and fluttering.

“Meadville. Amazing. _Fuck_ . Great. Okay. Yeah-ah, ah, _ahhh—_ “

Dean’s hips stuttered once, twice more; he squeezed his eyes shut, and let out one long, quiet, shuddering exhale. Sam groaned as the first fat pulse of come spattered his tongue. He hummed and purred and coaxed Dean through it, sucking greedily until the other man had nothing left to give but helpless little twitches and hisses.

Finally, spent and panting, Dean slumped backwards onto the mattress in a loose-limbed heap. Sam’s cell slipped from where it had been tucked against Dean’s chin and slid down onto the blankets beside his head.

“Hey, Garth? Buddy?” Dean said airily. “I-I gotta call you back.”

“Okey-dokey,” came the tinny, blissfully-unaware chirp. “Much love, fella.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean mumbled. “Love you, too.” He reached up to tap uselessly at the screen until, by some stroke of luck, he managed to hit the “end call” button.

Sam, his face wet and his legs stiff, groaned and stood. He wasn’t getting any younger, and his knees were aching just about as bad as his dick at this point. He looked down at Dean, who was laid out on the sheets at awkward, boneless angles. Sam put his hands on his hips and shook his head.

“I can’t believe you told Garth you loved him _right_ after you fucking came in my mouth. Feel like I oughta be pissed or something.” 

“Gimme a break,” mumbled Dean, looking absolutely ridiculous with his dopey grin and his sweat-shiny face and his dick laying limp and sticky against the fine hairs on his stomach. “Wasn’t really thinkin’ all that clearly. I love _everybody_ right now, dude.”

Sam laughed. He clambered up onto the bed, knocking Dean’s knees apart to sidle up between his thighs. Sam’s own dick still jutted out of his jeans, hard and red and wet; he let it slip-fuck against the over-sensitive softness of Dean’s.

“Stop it,” Dean complained, trying (but not _really_ trying) to push him away.

“Nope,” said Sam, and ground his hips forward harder. “After all that? You owe me.”

“Be a gentleman,” implored Dean, genuine enough to make Sam stop for a moment. “I’m _tender_.”

“Yeah?” Sam leaned down to run his cock-swollen lips over the cords of muscle in Dean’s neck. “You could be a lot _more_ tender,” he muttered against Dean’s pulse. “If you let me fuck you right. Please? You know I will. You know I’ll make it good.”

Dean sucked in a breath. Sam felt his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. One calloused, talented hand slipped down between their bodies to squeeze Sam’s dick.

“Always did have a way with words,” Dean chuckled, turning to press his nose against Sam’s hair. “Don’t you wanna know what Garth called us for?”

“Not really,” Sam admitted. He buried his face against Dean’s throat, fucked his hips against the slippery-tight circle of Dean’s fist. “Not right now, anyway. Can I fuck you? _Please_?”

“No, Sammy, _c’mon._ ” Dean groaned, exhausted, as Sam lapped the sweat from his jugular. “After what you just did to me, I’m off-limits below the belt for at least—“ Dean did some mental math. “—an hour.”

“Okay, okay,” said Sam gently. He dragged his mouth up the curve of Dean’s jaw to catch his mouth in a quick, dirty kiss. “Then, um, will you suck my dick instead?”

“Gladly,” grinned Dean, and proceeded to do just that.

It took only a record-breaking seven minutes of getting his face thoroughly fucked before Dean - his cock already chubbing up again - climbed into Sam’s lap to impale himself despite his earlier protests. Sam - who knew how to flip _Dean’s_ switches just as well as Dean knew how to flip _his_ \- may or may not have been banking on this happening.

Either way, he was enough of a gentleman to save any I-told-you-so’s for a little bit later.

* * *

With their most recent job finished, Sam and Dean left midmorning the next day. The stretch of country between Indiana and Pennsylvania was uneventful, but it would’ve at least been prettier during the warm, green parts of the year. As it stood, the persistent coating of late-February slush wasn’t doing it any favors. Thankfully, it wasn’t a particularly long drive - only about five hours. Just long enough (and just boring enough) for the Winchester brothers to get familiar with the new job they were heading into and pour over the information they’d gotten.

No fucking thanks to _Dean_.

Sam hadn’t been able to parse anything too worthwhile out of his brother’s boner-addled retelling the previous night. Which, alright, sure, the guy’s head wasn’t in the right place - no pun intended - but it had still been a little annoying (and embarrassing) to call Garth back and ask for the details again later that very same evening.

“Well, I already told Dean everything I had,” Garth had said, perplexed. “I thought I was pretty thorough.”

“Yeah, I know. You-you were, Garth. I’m sure you were,” Sam had told him, all apologies. “But I’d just - if you could send me what you had in, like, an email or something, that’d help a lot. Just to have on-hand, huh? In case Dean…forgot anything important.”

“Sure, sure.” Garth had paused, considering, and added, “I suppose I _did_ get the feeling that your brother was a little…distracted, at the time. Ya’ll must’ve really been working on something _real_ hard, huh?”

Ever-helpful, Garth had sent Sam a lengthy email full of attachments while he made further cheerful small talk. Sam didn’t really remember that half of the conversation, though, since he was too busy trying not to cringe himself inside-out.

The basic gist was this: Garth had come across a string of missing persons reports based in western PA. Meadville, specifically: a surprisingly-healthy factory town without much other news to speak of. One or two missing people did not necessarily make a case, but three or more was certainly enough to pique interest. The timeline didn’t hurt, either - every disappearance had occurred within the span of the last month. The fact that there had been no prior weirdness at all made the string of disappearances stand out even more.

“No omens, nothing.” 

The Impala growled over the wet pavement. Sam had lost count of how many identical snow-capped barns and farmhouses they’d passed, the whole countryside blurring together in a slate-grey malaise. It had been snowing steadily for several miles, and Sam didn’t see things clearing up in the near future.

“Nothing,” Dean echoed flatly. He sipped from his oversized gas-station soda. Somehow - in open defiance of the laws of physics - it was the same one he’d been sipping for like, two hours now. Sam was sure that if the ambient noise of the highway hadn’t been buzzing around him, he probably could’ve heard half of it sloshing and fizzing in Dean’s bladder. The man was a fucking camel. “Three people vanish in a month and there’s _nothing_ that leads up to it?”

“Nope. No significant historical dates cropping up in the last month, no unusual social or municipal events, nothing like that,” Sam agreed. He scrolled through the densely-packed digital documents on his phone screen. “Squeaky-clean, as far as a rust-belt town goes. No real history of major crime in the area, and no other MPs since the nineties, either. And from what I’ve got, even those look like they’re all closed cases.”

“Closed.” Dean crammed the cup inelegantly between his legs and gestured obliquely towards Sam. “Closed how? Abandoned, or…”

“Uh, _closed_ -closed,” Sam sighed. “Mostly the folks who’ve gone missing in the past either showed back up alive, or the bodies were all eventually recovered. And there were only a handful of those. Mostly, um, kids falling in ravines, people covering up crimes of passion, shit like that. Normal stuff.”

“Alright, what about our vics?” Dean asked. “Garth sent you the police reports with all that, right?”

“They’re not really _vics,_ are they?” Sam squinted at his screen, the small text straining his eyes in a way it didn’t used to do.

“Why not?” Dean cocked a brow at him.

Sam looked up from his phone, blinking. “Well, ‘cause they might still be alive.”

“Still victims,” Dean insisted. “Technically. Victims of-of being...kidnapped. And as much as I appreciate your positivity, Sammy, I gotta ask - what makes you think they’re alive?”

“What makes _you_ think they’re not?” Sam countered.

“ _Tch_. Everything.” Dean scoffed, but there was a sort of morose quality to it. “People don’t just disappear for shits and giggles, man. It’s usually because of somethin’ mean, and more often than not, somethin’ lethal. Missing, dead - by the time we show up, it’s pretty much the same thing, ain’t it?”

“I don’t know, I feel more optimistic when they stay missing,” Sam disagreed. “No bodies, no remains - that’s a good sign, sometimes. If they’re whole somewhere, sometimes they’re _alive_ somewhere. It’s when they’re already waiting for us in the morgue - or, y’know, when parts of ‘em are - that’s when I start thinking of them as victims. Before that, I try to think of ‘em as just—“ He shrugged. “Missing people. Makes it seem less...bleak.”

“Alright, Mother Teresa, relax,” Dean dismissed him lightly, his voice warm and affectionate despite his teasing. “That big ol’ soft heart of yours is gonna give out, one of these days.”

Sam looked at him sidelong. “My heart’s fine. I’d stick to worrying about your _own_ arteries, Burger King.”

“Eh, arteries-shmarteries. I’ll die like I lived,” said Dean pleasantly, and patted his stomach. “Greasy, happy—“

“—and fulla meat,” muttered Sam, and got socked in the arm as a reward.

“ _Anyway_ , smart-ass,” Dean groused, the tips of his ears turning pink. “What’ve you got for our _missing people_ , then?”

Laughing despite the hit, Sam went over the details he had at hand:

The vics - the _missing people_ \- ran the gamut, as far as demographics went. The first report, filed at the beginning of February, had been for a young woman named Jolyne Markusz. Only twenty years old, she’d transferred from southern Virginia to attend Allegheny College for the spring term. About a week after Jolyne’s disappearance, another report - this time for a local man named Dan Garrett - had been filed by Garrett’s wife. 

The most recent report - the one that had pinged Garth’s radar - had come through just two days ago. An employee at the Meadville Public Library had contacted the police when the library director had failed to show up to work and couldn’t be reached by phone. When questioned, staff members had told the sheriff’s department that the director’s sudden and unexplained absence was completely out-of-character. Ms. Victoria Juilliard hadn’t missed so much as a single day of work in almost five years, and damn near everyone in town knew it.

“The only consistent thing in all three cases is that they all seem pretty out-of-the-blue. No reports of any, uh, stalkers or anything—“ Sam finished looking over Ms. Juilliard’s report. It was just as basic and unhelpful as the others. “No one mentioned any big personal trouble for any of ‘em. And no sudden onset of depression, anger, self-isolation, paranoia…” He trailed off, exhaling, and tucked his phone away. 

“So they most likely didn’t take off while possessed or anything like that.”

“Maybe. But you know how people are. Sometimes the cops don’t press them enough, or ask the right questions to get the right answers.”

“Well, that’s where we come in,” said Dean, a bit smugly. “You mentioned Jolyne’s family was out of state. You get ahold of ‘em on the horn?”

“I left a message yesterday. Hopefully they feel like talking and hit us back.”

“Fingers crossed. What about the other two?”

“Uh, Garrett and Juilliard are both longtime locals,” said Sam. “Though Juilliard is a little…lean, in the info-mining department. No spouse, no kids, no surviving family in the area.“

“Bummer for us.” Dean shrugged. “And her, I guess.”

“Sounds like she spent most of her time at work. We might be able to get something from the staff. As for Garrett, I tried to get in touch with his wife this morning before we left, but no luck,” Sam added. 

“You leave her a message, too?”

“Couldn’t,” Sam told him, frowning thoughtfully. “Full inbox. Figure we’ll just have to visit her at home tomorrow.” 

This was a calculated move, rather than an actual inconvenience for two reasons: the first was that asking questions face-to-face was always better for getting a read on situations and on people; the second was that a house call also acted as also something of an intimidation tactic. It was easy enough to avoid a phone call, but people typically had a little more trouble ignoring you when you showed up on their doorstep.

“Fine by me,” Dean said amicably. “Head for the library once we hit town and get the skinny on the spinster, then go check in at the motel. See what kinda pay-per-view they got in Nowhere, Pennsylvania. You think the Amish make porn?”

“Course they do,” replied Sam. He settled back into his seat. The border-country between Ohio and Pennsylvania kept rolling on by, the barren trees twisting their skinny arms skyward like burnt fingerbones.“But it’s all analogue.”

“Nothin’ wrong with keeping it low-tech,” said Dean. His hand snuck into Sam’s periphery, spider-crawling fingers over Sam’s knee and slowly up his thigh. “Been known to enjoy some manual labor every now and again, myself.”

Sam flicked his eyes over to his brother’s face, raking over the mischievous quirk at the visible corner of his mouth. Dean was prone to flirtation when he was bored, and Sam knew better than to encourage it while they were supposed to be focusing on something else. Like, say, not sliding off the road and into a ditch full of Budweiser cans.

“Cool it, Jebediah,” Sam began, fighting a grin himself. “You don’t need to be driving stick-shift in this weather.”

“Whatever,” grumbled Dean, but he obediently stopped his hand at a fairly Christian altitude. “I’m still gonna look up Amish porn when we get to the motel.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Keep your hands to yourself for long enough and I’ll help you _make_ some Amish porn. Deal?”

Dean kept his hands to himself for the duration of the trip, if only because the weather continued getting worse further into Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, the drive didn’t take up enough of his attention to stop him from cracking more Amish jokes, and Sam eventually threatened to rescind his offer altogether if Dean made one more goddamn comment about “churning his butter.”

It didn’t work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re back with another long fic! I’ve had this one planned since long before I finished Apophenia, so I’m happy to be able to finally start on it! This story (as mentioned within the work itself) is set about a year and a half after the events in Apophenia. It is also decidedly more light-hearted than Apophenia (although I’m physically incapable of not including SOME pining and/or angst so—) Sam and Dean are in an established, monogamish relationship and this reflects that. This work also operates on a timeline that diverges from the show, meaning I reserve the right to ignore most dumbass plot lines from seasons 10 onward.
> 
> That being said, this IS a de-aging fic, and I won’t gloss over the fact that SPN canonically HAD a de-aging episode. But I DO want to go on record as saying that About A Boy sucked. That’s all.

**Author's Note:**

> This work will update a lot like everything else I do - which is to say, when I feel like it/when I can manage. Comments, kudos, bookmarks and all that are, as always, so appreciated. Thanks babies!! Xoxoxo


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